how think is the paint on/in impressionist paintings?

Question

Im painting van gogh's cafe tarrace,as an art project from school. Im wondering how thick was the paint in the actual painting. As i've never seen the original,i've only seen pictures of it. Is the paint applyed in layers?

Answer 1

Some of his paintings are unbelievably thick.. I don't believe I've seen the one you mention, but in one show of his work at the met in the 80's... I would bet that it was a half an inch thick in some places... In these paintings, it was not due to painting over... he did them FAST and splatted huge hunks of paint off of his brush.
One art history book that I read talked about him coming back to town from being out painting.. getting drunk and when he talked, he would swing the canvases around and splat paint on the people he was raving at.

Answer 2

I saw some Van Gogh's at an exhibit about four month's ago. If he had been using tube paint, I'd say straight from the tube to the canvas on most of them. It was a very limited show. Also most of the paintings were much smaller than you might think so don't go too large.

Answer 3

Van Gogh liked thick combinations of colors prepared on his palette, applied with the small brushes,
Here is a website of painting a la Van Gogh for children's art classes.
http://www.kinderart.com/painting/vangogh.shtml

Answer 4

yes it is layered quite thickly. van gogh was a perfectionist, add that to his tendancies of mental illness and u have an artist that would literally re-do every painting many times often he would repaint over the original, adding touches here and there. he used short, quick brush strokes. he was never really happy w/ any of his work. the worse his illness became, the more he would obsess over his work and he in the end became quite messy. his earlier works were much more precise even for impressionism.